The study aimed to identify the reality of intellectual capital among NGOs Organizations in Palestine. The study used the descriptive analytical approach. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data that contribute to achieving the objectives of the study. The study population consists of workers in NGOs Organizations. A random sample was used to collect data. 222 applicable questionnaires were retrieved. The results of the study showed that the general estimate for intellectual capital amounted to 79.84%, (...) and the results showed similar ratios and values for the various axes of the study. Relational capital has a relative weight (81.05%), Structural capital has a relative weight (79.24%) and Human capital has a relative weight (79.22%). The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the need to provide a budget for training and development, with the need to build clear foundations to motivate and encourage employees in organizations, and to give the management of institutions full freedom for employees to make decisions. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore how the balance use of performance measurement systems mediate the effects of intellectual capital dimensions including human, organizational and social capital on firm performance. The data were collected from a survey of 448 Vietnamese managers of Information and Communication Technology Sector and proposed hypotheses were tested by using partial least squares regression and a structural modeling technique which is appropriate for highly complex predictive models. Findings from hypotheses tests (...) indicated that firms with higher level of intellectual capital dimensions place a premium on the balance use of performance measurement systems in a diagnostic and interactive style. Furthermore, the result also provides some evidences that Intellectual capital dimensions effect indirectly on firm performance through performance measurement systems. (shrink)

The state of national economies development varies and is characterized by many indicators. Economically developed countries are known as doubtless leaders that are in progress and form political stability, social and economics standards, scientific and technical progress and determine future priorities. It is worth mentioning that the progressive development of national economies in conditions of globalization can take place only in case of the increase of their intellectualization level, through saturation of people`s life, economic relations and production by brain activity, (...) knowledge, creativity, innovation, culture, ethical considering of the historical heritage. The main aim of the research is national economies intellectualization evaluating in globalization conditions. In order to gain this aim, the following tasks were defined: to identify existing indices of the national economies intellectualization level evaluation, develop the authors’ methodological approach to the national economies intellectualization level, determine the areas of measurement results application. While conducting the research, systematic approach, the methods of analysis, synthesis, grouping, abstracting, generalization, imaginary experiment and grounding were used. In the modern world, there are a large number of indicators which characterize differences in intellectual state of the national economy. When comparing the state of national economies intellectualization, the problems arise with different number of countries, duplication of indicators, disproportionate number of the components of indicators, various years of publication, etc. Therefore, to ensure comparability, we choose four general indicators – the index of human development, the global innovation index, the global competitiveness index and the knowledge economy index. Using these indices, we do the research and determine the state of national economies intellectualization in the world economy. According to the calculated results, as of 2013, we have divided 190 national economies by level of intellectualization into five groups: countries with the highest (30 countries), high (30 (countries), low (30 countries), the lowest (35 countries) and the countries with uncertain state of intellectualization (65 countries). The leaders in the state of intellectualization are Switzerland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Finland and the USA. The countries with the highest level of intellectualization serve as an example to all other countries of the world. These countries are characterized by developed market economy; a dominant position in the international economy, which allows actively engaging own and imported resources in the economic turnover; the shift of the center of gravity of economic activity into the services sector and the dominance of service economy; the greatest exhaustion of sources and factors of industrial development; advanced post-industrial development. The economic policy of the first group of countries has a decisive influence on the state and dynamics of the global economy, defining the main directions of its scientific and technological development and structural adjustment. The average index of the national economy intellectualization (AINEI), calculated by the authors, shows the place of each country in the world community as to their intellectual capital. Considering the continued deployment of R&D progress, the growing role of high-tech production and the complexity of social and economic relations, AINEI can serve as a reliable indicator of the macroeconomic environment intellectualization state. Therefore, the following organizations, bodies and individuals can use the comparative results of this study: the international organizations while developing international economic development programs; the state authorities of the countries in foreign and domestic policy forming; companies that create innovative and investment policy; migrants, tourists and persons who perform professional and transit activity for the formation of human potential and capital; scientists and teachers who develop mechanisms of intellectualization. (shrink)

A summary of issues related to symbolic capital, authorial presences, and intellectual property rights, and the necessity of finding a way out of 500-600 years of capitalist exploitation of the knowledge commons.

In the context of the global intellectualization, human capital is the determining factor in the innovation development and the international competitiveness of countries. In the XXI century. the leading component of human capital are qualitatively new information, communication and network technologies. Particular importance are education and training, professionalism, high level of human resources management, building up, reproduction and human capital development. These factors are the prerequisite for the growth of the competitive advantages of the country in the (...) conditions of globalization. (shrink)

This two-part, semi-gothic literary essay seeks a provisional definition of “benevolent capital” and a working description of types of artistic and scholarly work that have no value for Capital as such. The paradox observed is that such works may actually appeal to a certain aspect of Capital, insofar as present-day capitalism has within it forms of pre-modern political economy that may actually save Capital from its mad rush toward self-immolation.

Not-I/Thou: The Other Subject of Art and Architecture is a series of essays delineating the gray areas and black zones in present-day cultural production. Part One is an implicit critique of neo-liberal capitalism and its assault on the humanities through the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-empirical biases of academic and professional disciplines, while Part Two returns to apparent lost causes in the historical development of modernity and post-modernity, particularly the recourse to artistic production as both a form of mnemonics and periodic (and (...) renascent) avant-garde agitation. In-between these twin systems of taking the measure of things, Art and Architecture, as forms of speculative intellectual capital, emerge from the shadow-lands of half-conscious and half-unconscious forces to become gestures toward a type of knowledge that has no utilitarian or generic agency. Defying the tendencies of such discourses to fall prey to instrumental orders that effectively neuter the inherent radical agenda of both, Art and Architecture are represented in this series of essays as noetic apparatuses, operating at the edge of authorized systems of knowledge, quietly and secretly validating and valorizing the shadowy and recondite, collective and personal operations of intellect in service to no particular end. (shrink)

The resources and resource potential of the innovative component of nanoeconomics are analyzed. The factors of production – classical types of resources such as land, labor, capital and technology – are described. Ways of influencing the security resources of nanoeconomics within the innovation paradigm are evaluated. The purpose of the study is to identify the factor of nanoeconomics in the formation of resource security potential in the innovation paradigm. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set: to characterize (...) the importance of the land resource as a factor in the potential of economic nanosystems; to highlight the importance of capital as a factor of nanoproduction and an indicator of the innovation paradigm; to determine the labor resource in the development of innovative nanosystems; to analyze the intellectual potential of nanoeconomic development of the innovation paradigm; to identify clusters of innovative nanopotential in the regions of countries with transition economies. Each resource is examined separately with the first analysis of a resource security assessment such as land. The other resource under consideration is labor. Demographic factors become decisive in describing the development of labor resources. The capital factor allows the formation of independent economic systems, when the state budget affects the possibility of developing science, education and health care. A number of methods were applied during the study: methods of induction and deduction (to assess the importance of the innovation paradigm for the development of nanoeconomics); system analysis and structural approach (to determine the aggregate state of production factors); method of comparing the quality of production factors in market economies and in developed countries; an observation method (for assessing the state of resources in different countries); method of cluster analysis (to determine the existence of innovation-territorial regions in countries with economies in transition). The analysis is carried out to identify the conditions of the impact of production factors on the innovative paradigm of nanoeconomics. It reveals theoretical approaches to the formation of nanoeconomics and its active development. As a result of the study of intellectual and resource potential of security, a cluster analysis was carried out to assess the conditions for the formation of innovation-territorial regions. This study allows to understand the role of production security factors in the formation of the innovation paradigm and the efficiency of the development of nanoeconomics. The way of providing the basis for the development of nanoeconomics in the form of efficient use of production factors is considered as a perspective. (shrink)

If solutions to the problem of inequality are to be as radical as reality now demands, what is instead required is a reimagining of what would be involved comprehensively to tame capitalism through democratic means. This will involve much further development of the kind of plurality of institutional and policy proposals sketched by Meade, and will involve both the private and public – individual and collective – forms of capital predistribution that Meade advocated. Piketty, like Meade, sees the need (...) for both redistribution and predistribution, and both see that the institutional means necessary to create a more equal society will involve pursuing a plurality of parallel paths. It is closely in keeping with the spirit of Piketty’s Capital that the political and intellectual agenda ahead will be one that economics on its own cannot hope to encompass. It’s a vital agenda, with high stakes, and presents challenges to both academic researchers and political activists. On the success of this endeavour depends nothing less than the prospects for legitimate continuation of our economic system. (shrink)

This paper presents the problem of workers lay off and loss along with their exit from the organization its key competencies - skills and knowledge. Importance of management of key competencies was described. The paper also presents outplacement as a way to maintain core competencies even during reducing the human resources within the enterprises.

Artykuł podejmuje problematykȩ zwolnień pracowników przedsiȩbiorstw, która zyskuje na znaczeniu wraz z utrzymywaniem siȩ globalnego kryzysu gospodarczego na pocz¸a}tku XXI wieku. Kryzys prowadzi do dynamicznych zmian w otoczeniu organizacji i w wielu przypadkach wymusza decyzje o podjȩciu działań restrukturyzacyjnych. Restrukturyzacja przedsiȩbiorstw może obejmować zarówno ograniczenie kosztów prowadzenia działalności, modernizacjȩ procesów produkcji i świadczenia usług, zmianȩ rynków i partnerów biznesowych, jak również racjonalizacjȩ zatrudnienia. Zmiany w strukturze zatrudnienia mog¸a} prowadzić do kształtowania nowych, bardziej elastycznych relacji z pracownikami. W tym kontekście outplacement (...) jako koncepcja odpowiedzialnego zarz¸a}dzania zwolnieniami pracowników umożliwia zarówno złagodzenie negatywnych skutków utraty pracy i skrócenie okresu bezrobocia, jak też ochronȩ kompetencji istotnych przedsiȩbiorstwa. Opracowanie w oparciu o krytyczn¸a} analizȩ literatury przedmiotu przybliża: przesłanki do outplacementu jakimi s¸a negatywne efekty redukcji zatrudnienia w organizacji, stereotypowe i racjonalne kryteria zwolnień pracowników oraz koncepcjȩ kompetencji kluczowych i ich ochrony. ** Article undertakes issue of enterprises layoffs, which is becoming increasingly important along with persistence of the global economic crisis at the beginning of the 21st century. Crisis leads to dynamic changes in the organization environment and in many cases forces the decision to take restructuring actions. Restructuring of firms may include both reduction of operating costs, modernization of production and services processes, changing markets and business partners, as well as the rationalization of employment. Changes in the structure of employment can lead to the development of new, more flexible relationship with employees. In this context, the outplacement as a concept of responsible management of the redundancies can both address the possible negative effects of job losses and reduction of unemployment, as well as the protection essential company competences. Article on the basis of the literature critical analysis brings: evidence for outplacement which are the negative effects of downsizing in the organization, stereotyped and rational criteria for redundancies as well as the concept of key competencies and their protection. (shrink)

The increasing standardization, specialisation and monetarization of academic publishing is designed to foster quality in research and expression. But these tendencies also pose serious challenges to the expression of cultural difference, particularly with regard to philosophy and religious studies. Scholars from various cultural backgrounds outside of mainstream universities often find themselves marginalised when the quality of their work is judged through the metrics of mainstream academic publishing. Smaller journals which give a forum to local research are gradually disappearing or becoming (...) irrelevant. The corporate control of publishing limits the access and distribution of information making it difficult for smaller regional universities to access and conduct research. But these challenges to the expression of cultural difference also reflect the deeper tendencies of the information age. To approach this problem, we need to consider the conflict between culture and spirit on the one hand, with the flows of information and capital on the other. I will introduce this problem through an idea of hermeneutics presented by George McLean. I will then discuss the approaches to this problem by such writers as Michel Serres, Jean Francois Lyotard, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida. I will show that these latter writers devise strategies to reach something outside of the cybernetic flows of information in the media age, but that their solutions are incomplete because they rely on intellectual concepts of redemption and ignore the concrete practices of spiritual redemption. The issue that cross-cultural journals must consider is how to emphasize something beyond the merely intellectual; how to amplify practice within its expression. I will address this issue in the spirit of a poem by Emily Dickinson entitled “Publication – is the Auction” which supplies the title of this essay. (shrink)

This two-part, semi-gothic literary essay seeks a provisional definition of “benevolent capital” and a working description of types of artistic and scholarly work that have no value for Capital as such. The paradox observed is that such works may actually appeal to a certain aspect of Capital, insofar as present-day capitalism has within it forms of pre-modern political economy that may actually save Capital from its mad rush toward self-immolation.

After being recalled to Beijing in 1510 for evaluation and reassignment in the wake of his two-year exile to Guizhou and his period of service as a magistrate, Wang Yangming was assigned to a succession of posts at the capital that kept him there through 1512. During that short time, he remained disillusioned with the Ming court and high politics and chose to put his energies into fostering a philosophical movement. He believed that by restoring the “way of master-disciple (...) relations and friendship,” he could help propagate the learning of the sages. To that end, he held jiangxue gatherings with colleagues and friends and carried on an active correspondence. In those venues, Wang Yangming engaged others with his ideas about the goal of sagehood, the obstacles to attaining it, and the methods for overcoming those obstacles. The following article reconstructs this critical period in Wang Yangming's philosophical development and the intellectual movement he sought to foster, as well as the status of his philosophy as of this point in time. -/- . (shrink)

In the context of Ukraine’s membership in the WTO, the functioning of a free trade area with the EU, the opportunity for agricultural producers to obtain a larger share of the value added is primarily linked to the intensification of trade in domestic livestock products and their processing products. However, their production is one of the high-risk areas and requires a set of measures aimed at ensuring proper quality. Without effective solution of the problem of quality of livestock products it (...) is impossible to ensure its competitiveness in the world market, to guarantee the rational nutrition of the population of the country, the availability of the necessary components for the vital activity of the human body. The aim of the research is to determine the socio-economic factors for ensuring the quality of livestock products in Ukraine. The scientific and specific research methods were used to solve the tasks set in the work: the historical method; abstraction method; method of comparative analysis; system-structural method. The main producer of livestock products in Ukraine are households. They do not have the capabilities to implement technologies of keeping, feeding, veterinary services, programs prerequisites for guaranteeing the safety of products, adherence to the HACCP principles. In Ukraine, real technical, economic and organizational-economic prerequisites for ensuring the safety and quality of livestock products are created only in the poultry meat sector. During 2015-2017, the trends in production of almost all types of livestock products except poultry and honey were identified. One of the reasons for this situation was, firstly, decreasing in capital investment in the livestock sector, and secondly, the low profitability of production of livestock products in the context of accelerated growth in prices for resources. It is proved that insignificant market (price) incentives should be supplemented with instruments of state assistance to improve the quality parameters of products on the basis of specialized enterprises. The necessity of state support for the production of livestock products based on small and medium-sized enterprises is substantiated. This will effectively combine the processes of increasing the production of livestock products with the environmental friendliness of production and steady improvement of quality. It is shown that the low quality of certain livestock products in Ukraine is caused by insufficient living standards of the population and low incomes of the majority of households, which cause them to consume low quality products. It is determined that the problem of guaranteeing the quality of livestock products in Ukraine has deep roots cause due to the influence of socio-economic factors. Therefore, a comprehensive approach is needed to solve it, which is not limited to improving the efficiency of the state control system and successfully harmonizing of the Ukrainian technical regulation system with the European one. The problem of low quality and the danger of livestock production requires a systematic approach for its solution, which is not limited, in particular, by measures to improve the system of state control and ensure approximation of the domestic technical regulation system to the European one. In Ukraine, major high-quality animal products are economically inaccessible to a large part of households. The projected increase in safety parameters and a certain improvement in the quality of livestock products as a result of the implementation of regulations adopted in 2014-2017, will necessarily lead to an increase in its value, and therefore may lead to a decrease in market demand and even greater inaccessibility of these products to people. All this can only aggravate the situation with guaranteeing the food security of the country, forming the prerequisites for increasing the intellectual capacity of the nation. (shrink)

This paper is basically a presentation of the tenets of Pierre Bourdieu’s philosophy in a language and level that can be easily understood by Filipino students and scholars of philosophy, cultural studies and Philippine studies. The discussion of Bourdieu’s philosophy revolves around 1) his concepts of habitus, field and symbolic violence; 2) his critique of television; 3) his theory of capitals; 4) some implications of his theory of capitals; and 5) his being public intellectual. The ultimate aim of this (...) paper is to suggest some aspects and dimensions of Philippine society and culture that can be analyzed using some of bourdieu’s thoughts as interpretive frameworks, as well as to challenge the said Filipino students and scholars of philosophy, cultural studies and Philippine studies to creatively and effectively appropriate such theories for the enrichment of the theoretical corpus of Philippine studies. This paper is part of a series of similar works done by one of the co-authors that dealt with Adorno, Schleiermacher and Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer and Bultmann, and Lyotard. (shrink)

This article embarks on making a political analysis of Islamist politics by criticizing the hegemonic approach in the field and considering a number of the institutions or structures, composing of either state and its ideological-repressive apparatuses, political parties and actors, intellectual leadership and ideology, and political relations, events, or facts in political sphere. The aforesaid approach declares that the social and economic factors, namely class position, capital accumulation, market, education, and culture, have been far better significative for a (...) political study in examining any political movement, party, and fact or event. However, our study will more stress on political structures, events and struggles or conflicts produced and reproduced by the political institutions, the relationships and the processes in question. Taking into account all these, it will be argued that they have been more significant as compared to class position, capital accumulation, market in economic structure, or culture and education, in a political study. (shrink)

In July 1759 the French philosopher Andre´ Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716-1764) published in Berlin a diatribe against the excessive and incorrect use of French in the Prussian capital. Far from being a mere guide to linguistic style, the Préservatif contre la corruption de la langue françoise generated a heated debate, attested by an official threat to ban its publication. The personal animosity between Prémontval and the perpetual secretary of the Berlin Academy, Jean Henri Samuel Formey (1711-1797) was (...) amply demonstrated over the pages of the Préservatif, offering a rare insight into the complex web of social and intellectual tensions in mid eighteenth-century Berlin and its Academy of Sciences. At stake were the social status and the philosophical outlook of local Huguenots, compared to that of French philosophers who were granted asylum in Prussia by Frederick II. The debate also concerned the issues of academic freedom in an absolutist regime, the material production and distribution of texts, conduct and etiquette in the Republic of Letters and the formation of group identities in eighteenth-century Germany. Drawing on manuscripts preserved in Berlin, Göttingen and Krakow, this article traces the development of the controversy and the reception of Prémontval’s work by both French- and German- writing authors at the Berlin Academy and beyond its confines. (shrink)

This monograph contrasts two prominent models of education, Competence-Based Education (CBE), more recent and currently dominant in most school systems around the world, and Bildung-Oriented Education (BOE), once the basis of the school systems of Northern Europe. CBE is assessment-oriented and interprets learning as the acquisition of clearly definable and allegedly measurable competences, and is supported by supranational organisations, such as the OECD, which approach education from the perspective of human capital theory. BOE is instead teaching-oriented and characterises learning (...) holistically as aimed at the progressive articulation of a meaningful ‘big picture’ in the student’s mind. Emerged in Northern Europe under the influence of the ideals of the Enlightenment and Neo-Humanism of individual and collective autonomy and responsibility, BOE was subsequently enriched with a hermeneutical approach to teaching and socio-political objectives of emancipation and solidarity originating within Critical Theory. The book first analyses CBE and argues that, in spite of its celebrated ‘scientificity’, it is internally incoherent and unreliable, contributes to structural forms of oppression and injustice, can foster social pathologies, and fails to provide students with the kind of intellectual autonomy they need as both human beings and citizens of our complex post-industrial societies. Then, it introduces BOE and articulates and defends an updated version of it from objections raised by critical theorists, poststructuralists and postcolonial thinkers. It argues that BOE is a coherent and flexible model of education that endows students with autonomy and responsibility, can reduce structural forms of oppression and injustice, and can heal social pathologies. (shrink)

Dr. Seyed Mohammad Mohajer, author of this book, for the first time, on the subject of SEM (Student Experience Management) and TEM :(Teacher Experience Management), Expresses and writes In today’s competitive world in which men are looking for acquiring a better place for themselves and their properties, indeed it can be said that people who compete on a full scale in marketing and branding by learning knowledge and experience, are more successful. Apart from people, countries, cities, businesses, historical and religious (...) sites, companies, products, services, and even government agencies are endeavoring and competing to possess a better place and more profitability. In the meantime, universities, higher education institutions, and specialized schools such as Business Schools, Language Schools, Art Schools, etc are not exceptions. Contest in the digital and traditional area, simultaneously, and with a proper strategy and developing systematic advertising campaigns can make a university or higher education institutions a brand. Since the branding process, as its name implies, has a -ing (continuous), the process must be continual and running continuously. One of the most significant tools in higher education institutions branding is CEM (Client Experience Management) which includes SEM (Student Experience Management) and TEM (Teacher Experience Management). Valuing the main audiences, which are students and professors, and creating a distinctive and excellent experience in the educational environment either in a digital or in a traditional area, can lead to receive excellent feedback from these audiences and direct them to the brand layers that are Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, Engagement, Satisfaction, Loyalty and the highest level that is Passion, which the same matter make the sense of constancy and belonging and conversion Trademark (Servicemark) a higher education institution to a Lovemark. But how this distinctive experience and feeling can be infused with the audiences? Undoubtedly, many solutions are recommended in this field, such as the use of sensory branding methods, but the important point here is who can create and improve this experience? Certainly, the University Staff has a key and very effective role in the mentioned process. However, the significant point is which employees can make this experience? The answer is very simple but key: Employees who first receive a good sense of working in a scientific and educational environment. Therefore, we are facing a phenomenon called SEM (Staff Experience Management), that is, university administrators and heads, before engaging in Client Experience Management, should seek to create a sense of satisfaction, belonging, and loyalty in the educational environment and grow their educational brand set, which its tools are certainly Employer Branding and Human Capital Management. By mentioning all the foregoing keywords, each of which is a deep concept in BRAND Building and Branding of higher education institutions discussion, we begin our main discussion, namely marketing and branding in higher education institutions. I hope you will be with us by the end of the book and experience a different studying the book, dear reader. Dr. Mohajer writes in his introduction: Be the best version of yourself I daresay all brand and branding concepts and definitions can be observed in the above sentence. whereof the brand, like a human, experiences all the before birth, birth, growth, maturity, wane and death processes, and since a real human being is always looking for growth and ascendancy, and this continuous process to reach the endpoint Life, thus the grown man is always looking to reach a higher point of his present and past. The most important tool in a human ascendancy or a brand is certainly an education. Either for a human or a brand, becoming a distinct brand goes through practical training. The above sentences are a summary of my little experience as Seyed Mohammad Mohajer in education and especially training in the brand management field. Certainly, the brand and education and the combination of these two words are the main and vital tools for the development of any country and human being. Now that I am the President of Tarjoman Oloom Higher Education Institute and the BrandAfarin international group, I consider it necessary as my social mission to start first from myself and with a better understanding of myself, then the great God and comprehending the universe; I announce to the cultured society that we seek to identify brilliant talents in the three areas of education, research and management consulting, and we warmly welcome intellectuals, professionals and individuals seeking individual and organizational growth. Also, by creating skill training courses in four specialized fields of management in the Business School, foreign languages ​​in the Language School of Art and Media in the Art School, and new technologies in the i4.0 School for people who can not afford to pay for the training tuition, We have created the chance to study at Tarjoman Oloom Higher Education Institute for free and then go to the business market. It would be my honor to contact me for more information and direct communication through my website www.mohajer.tvLinks to an external site. and my email info(at)mohajer.tv. Book Details: ISBN-13 : 979-8574963845 Paperback : 272 pages Language: : English ASIN : B08PJPQSK9 Paperback : 272 pages Author: Seyed Mohammad Mohajer, PhD. (President of Tarjoman Oloom Higher Education Institute) For more information on Marketing and Branding in Higher Education Institute, visit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PJPQSK9Links to an external site. (shrink)

Global capitalism is the politico-economic structure that subjects everything to its interests. It creates unimaginable poverty, ecological crisis, the ongoing pandemic, wars without end, and other horrors that humans can inflict against each other. Within this capitalist configuration, an idea and a political movement emerged that seeks to destroy the foundation of this system. Communism is this idea and political movement. The foundation of capitalism that they wanted to dismantle is private bourgeois property. In general, the Bolshevik revolution did destroy (...) that foundation, but this was not enough. It only resulted in the eventual transformation of the party as the collectivized bourgeoisie with its authoritarian state apparatus. It transformed this bourgeois-liberal capitalism into state-run capitalism. The revolutionary class that was supposed to be emancipated, remained as they were in capitalism, producer of the means of subsistence and surplus value. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean that the idea of communism is already dead. It should have been the perfect time to reassess the theoretical foundations of communism and test the ideas of Marx and others in their practical-idealistic form. The production and reproduction of capitalist social relations create everyday consciousness for all capitalist subjects, even to passionate communist revolutionaries. This is how ideology works. But the continuing havoc of global capitalism continues. The Left goes on with their same old traditions. They do not see that precisely ii their unceasing failure is one of the conditions for capitalism and its state apparatus to have the capacity to reinvent itself. In Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slovenian-born philosopher and global thinker Slavoj Zizek said that capitalism is incapable of solving the Covid-19 crisis. In his more than a thousand-page book paradoxically called Less Than Nothing, he said that ‘really existing’ socialism failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism. Can we utilize this Zizekian idea of communism, an idea that generates criticism both to capitalism and 20th-century communism to reinvent communism for it to revitalize its struggle against global capitalism? To answer this question, I employed Critical Theory through the ideas of communism of Zizek. I started with capitalism’s totality. It manifests itself in the world of commodities. Commodities are everywhere and almost in everything. Commodification not only involves things that man uses but humanity herself is commodified. Then I elaborated on the notion of the proletariat because she is the “commodified man” personified. The identification of the proletariat almost exclusively with factory workers is the prevailing idea in the Left movement. I tried to show that the proletariat is the overwhelming majority in every industry. Capitalism, I claim is both producing employment and unemployment. And the unemployed, not only are included as members of the proletarian class, but looking at it objectively, they may play a significant role in the political struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, as I tried to describe in quite a detailed fashion the various industries of capitalism and the sub-groups of the unemployed, it becomes evident that even without mentioning it, the proletariat is the class that almost everyone belongs to, except, as might be expected, the bourgeoisie. -/- Then I mustered the audacity to question Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. I also tried to imagine what will happen to the economic categories in Marx’s Capital in communism. My objective was to identify what is lacking in Marx that may explain the Left’s unending failure. I think I succeeded, although in a very superficial manner, in trying to locate what was missing in Marx’s theory. It was not enough to transform the bourgeois property into public property, but this transformation must stop commodity production itself. Commodity production is this self-perpetuating character of capitalist production. Then it led to further elucidation of the metamorphosis of commodity production to the production of human needs. Another idea is the double negation of the communist revolution. Communism must not only negate the bourgeois class but the proletariat herself. Marx only emphasized the dissolution of the bourgeoisie but failed to relate this dissolution to the proletariat’s self-negation. Absolutely, the significant reduction of working hours is fundamental for communism. This reduction must result from the conscious expansion of the workers' free time. Expanding free time is at the same time reducing time for production. Essentially, this is the process of the self-negation of the proletariat. I also tried to put forward an idea that directly links reform and revolution. They are directly linked with each other because both are communistic. A communist campaign for higher wages is directly involved with the communist expansion of political power. Communist reform becomes revolutionary. Concomitantly, the notion of revolution also changes. The communist revolution, instead of it being a sudden, external, and most often violent event, becomes an internal transformative process and possibly less violent. I concluded by transforming the concepts I think Marx missed into political possibilities. That is why I expounded on the immediate aims Marx and Engels enumerated in the Communist Manifesto and tried to claim the probability of the impossible in the communist struggle for political power and Man’s eventual freedom. -/- Marx's description of factory work creates no illusion about the status of freedom in capitalism. In Capital, he said that “factory work... confiscates every atom of freedom, both bodily and in intellectual activity.” And I think Marx made clear that the only way to freedom is ultimately to destroy capitalism. These words of his in Capital will cast no doubt, “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” And to signify who are those experiencing this unfreedom, Marx and Engels summon the subject of the revolution in their famous lines in the Communist Manifesto and urge them to fight, “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Today is the time for philosophy because it is the age of declining freedom. But the prevailing capitalist structure is necessitating this unfreedom. And for philosophy to become what it is, communism should become philosophy. (shrink)

The Shadow of God in the Philosopher’s Garden. The Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of the philosophy of chôra I Bernard Tschumi’s project of the Parc de La Villette could have won the competition and was implemented thanks to the political atmosphere that accompanied the victory of the left-wing candidate in the French presidential elections in 1981. François Mitterand’s revision of the political programme and the replacement of radical reforms with the construction of prestigious architectural objects (...) and urban assumptions in the French capital gave Tschumi a unique opportunity to realise ideas that polemicised with traditional forms of social life, questioned the basic principles of architecture and included architectural work in the philosophical disputes over the issues of metaphysics. Tschumi’s theoretical assumptions put forward during the design of the Parc de La Villette highlighted the questions of conflict between the main components of the project and suggested that the intensification of differences was analogous to Jacques Derrida’s creation of the concept of différance. It was this philosopher who in a special commentary to Derrida’s project also introduced the concept of maintenant, which aimed at demonstrating that the architect’s polemical inclinations remain in a hidden balance with his inclinations to affirmation of architectural principles. During the discussion between Derrida and Peter Eisenman, who was to take part in the design of the Parisian park, the concept of the chôra was also put forward, which in the course of the debate led to an additional confusion of architectural and philosophical problems. II In the period from the Antiquity to the Renaissance, the dialogue Timaeus was the most frequently commented work of Plato. At present, the most frequently discussed is the issue of the chôra included in it, which aroused fascination among philosophers, researchers of rhetoric, religion, feminism, but also architecture. The work on the chôra also influenced the development of the interpretation of the Parc de La Villette, among which the topics related to the beginning and the change were highlighted. In early uses of the word chôra in Greek, as in Homer’s 18th Book of Iliad, it meant both dancing and a place to dance. On this occasion, it can be seen that it is not possible to determine which phenomenon took precedence in the creation of the name. It cannot be denied, however, that the word concerned a specific movement, as if circular and returning to an indefinable beginning. Despite gaining more and more general meanings, the word chôra has retained its connection with the dance of people on the threshing floor, the dance of bees (choros meliton) or the dance of stars (choros astron). In Timaeus, the chôra is a space filled with movement with an effect similar to shaking the sieve to husk the grain: it separates similar elements from the dissimilar ones. The juxtaposition of the Parc de La Villette and the chôra already at this stage leads to the suggestion that the park was treated by the architect as a place of dynamic changes leading to the establishment of new social solutions. In his statements, the architect confirmed that the park was to be a space of new politics and ethics. The book by Julia Kristeva La Révolution du langage poétique contributed to the spread of the belief that works of art can play a role as factors of political revolution. In this work, the author put forward the thesis that the chôra is a kind of space, the character of which has a destructive influence on attempts to conclude language games. The chôra gives beginning to words, but at the same time, by leaving a trace of this beginning it forces us to renew their meanings. The chôra understood in this way, turns out to be an irremovable beginning, to which one has to return all the time. Kristeva found manifestations of the chôra’s activity in avant-garde French poetry, to which she attributed the role of a mediator between criticism of metaphysics and aspirations for social change. The chôra, violating the language, introduces some voids into it, as if traces of the abyss, which direct the consciousness towards understanding the necessity of political changes. The Parc de La Villette was to pursue similar objectives in the city space. In his essays, Tschumi considered the problems of creating spaces that would give rise to a radical democracy. The proposed rebellious spaces should have the characteristics of a void, in which contradictory forces would occur as forms of pure activity. The means of achieving this goal was to concentrate contradictions and make them visible. The Parc de La Villette was supposed to collect differences as indelible and at the same time by showing them it was supposed to raise awareness of the social world as a conglomerate of differences. Saturation of the space of the park with subversive values results from the character of this space suppressed in the consciousness, as well as from the social diversity which has not been taken into account so far. The main contradictions contained in space relate to the division that exists between its presentation as a mental problem and a sensual one. The park was the deliberate creation of a place that transcends such a division and creates a separate space for negotiation between architectural theories and its practical applications. The purpose of the park was to become a place of future events, which would not hide their conflicting character coming from diversity of both space and society. The method of composition usually aimed at achieving a harmonious whole has been replaced by Tschumi with a system of juxtaposition of non-coherent elements or those resulting from variations and transformations. Tschumi did not seek direct influence on politics in the Parc de La Villette, but made room for thinking about the possibilities of the future. He introduced problems rather than showed solutions to them. The task of the park was to put the principles of architecture into a kind of vibration that would inspire users to participate in the new community. III Tschumi believes that the quality of architecture depends on the theoretical factor it contains. Such a view led to the creation of architecture that would achieve visibility and comprehensibility only after its interpretation. On his way to creating such an architecture he took on a purely philosophical reflection on the basic building block of architecture, which is space. In 1975, he wrote an essay entitled Questions of Space, in which he included several dozen questions about the nature of space. The questions he formulated could be regarded as analogous to the situation in the philosophy of the time, in which the interest in questioning the most obvious forms of understanding the world and intellectual categories increased. The research on space is an area common to many fields of natural sciences, humanities and artistic creation, but it also deals with other problems, such as issues of experience. The concept of space-time continuum proposed by Hermann Minkowski drew attention to the identity of time and space with the events taking place. Probably regardless of the postulates of physicists commenting on Albert Einstein’s discoveries, also in philosophy it increased the importance of the concept of the event which became dominant in Martin Heidegger’s latest work Contributions of Philosophy: Of the event. Furthermore, Tschumi’s reflections on space entered into relation with the problem of experience, which aroused the interest of a group of French philosophers trying to assimilate Georges Bataille’s concept of “inner experience”. Both Tschumi and Derrida referred to Bataille because his views could be used not only to modify the concept of the subject, but also to change the understanding of what constitutes the area of architecture. The discussion on experience has led to the recognition that the subject is not sovereign, but actually a form of what is on their outside. Such insights make it possible to treat the area of the Parc de La Villette as existing mainly when it is organised by its users. The decisive features of the park are its assumptions, according to which it is a variety of active void that leads to agreeing new social relations with it. The park does not force to participate in already existing moral or political communities, but tries to move into an unknown future in which the scope of free functioning of individuals will be increased. Doubts about the principles of functioning of the individual self and its discovery as a whole composed of non-coherent parts, as well as its dependence on its own depth full of disordered forces, influenced the understanding of architecture as a set of contradictions whose source is a fundamental void anticipating the empty phenomenal space. The use of this phenomenal void in architecture, as well as the rejection of the whole and unity, had a specific political purpose and drew its inspiration from political analyses. In the Parc de La Villette, metaphysics and politics were brought closer together because the philosophy of void was used to create new conditions for community action. It can be argued that the source of this philosophy was the perception of errors in existing societies dependent on the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics. Spacing (espacement) was one of the key terms in Derrida’s philosophy, which was also combined with the concepts of différance and chôra. The study of the nature of space, especially its transition from the level of pure possibility to the level of sensual phenomenon, also contributes to understanding how well designed space can have an impact on its audience. This explanation is based on Tschumi’s assumption that the space of the Parc de La Villette contradicts the integrating approaches and instead exposes contradictions, but it does so in a way that combines incompatible properties into a single piece of architecture. The specificity of such integration is similar to the invention of a musical phrase, which is an ideological message: moral and political. Such a thesis may raise doubts, however, if both the clearly adopted assumptions and those deduced from the work allow for their logically ordered presentation then to a limited extent it may be assumed that the work has achieved a connection between a specific philosophy of space and its practical application. Derrida combined the problem of spatiality with the problem of transcendental imagination in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who in the first version of Critique of Pure Reason assumed that pure imagination precedes the appearance of time and space, even in their transcendental forms. The imagination in such a situation can be described as a factor activating time and space, which indicates what function is played by movement in this activity. This leads us to recognize that the ultra originary source of pure forms of sensual intuition is movement, which in early Greek philosophy was identified with void and its lack of resistance to phenomena occurring in it. Derrida’s philosophy in search of a certain super-transcendental source of time and space pointed to différance which, like void or the chôra, does not have material features or even any other form of being. Différance is the primary cause of the disruption of motionlessness and the introduction of activity into motionless time and space, thus its activity can be described as spacing (espacement). Derrida’s discoveries in this respect are not entirely original, because Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel already pointed out when examining the present that it is primarily a differential relation (differente Beziehung), which, being seemingly neutral, influences the present with supernatural force and makes it unidentifiable with itself. Differente Beziehung must similarly influence the originary space, negating its initial character by multiplying its divisions and expanding its boundaries. Différance acts by revealing contradictions wherever there is apparent undifferentiation. Tschumi, composing the Parc de La Villette as a variety of void and a set of incompatible layers, followed the rules of différance or the chôra: he made void visible together with its saturation with contradictions. If space can be considered to be the result of the activity of difference, such activity has a certain regularity, which influences the behaviour of its observers. Differences or contradictions fall into a certain rhythm, which can be considered a manifestation of transcendent order. The problem is that what can be considered the source of such order, namely the logos or God, is partly disorder and error. According to descriptions contained in Timaeus, the world is a combination of forces that drive to order with forces of erroneous necessity that resounds in every order and forces it to return to disorder. Derrida denied the possibility of understanding différance as a theological value, even if it were a negative or apophatic theology, but no categorical denial could be perfect. The assumption that différance or the chôra are not endowed with any substance properties cannot deny their activity, and thus a certain force. Already since Democritus, philosophy has multiplied the names of such a force and the contradictory variety of its manifestations, never forgetting also the necessity for reason to withdraw from the possibility of giving its correct characteristics. Such a withdrawal may be interpreted as an expression of respect and, in certain situations, as a cult of the force that precedes reasonableness. The Parc de La Villette, which is an artistic divagation about the contradictions and forces behind them, can be considered as a place of their sublimation, and therefore as a variation of the temple of what differs from order and disorder. IV In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Derrida, prove that terms such as “disruption”, “dissociation”, “disfunction”, “disjunction” and “dispersion” not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Parc de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus athesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or the Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the status of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’Autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. V In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. Parc de La Villette represents the last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, absolute otherness (tout autre) and the Impossible were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others).Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. John Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

What is intellectual humility? In this essay, we aim to answer this question by assessing several contemporary accounts of intellectual humility, developing our own account, offering two reasons for our account, and meeting two objections and solving one puzzle.

The internet has become an ubiquitous epistemic source. However, it comes with several drawbacks. For instance, the world wide web seems to foster filter bubbles and echo chambers and includes search results that promote bias and spread misinformation. Richard Heersmink suggests online intellectual virtues to combat these epistemically detrimental effects . These are general epistemic virtues applied to the online environment based on our background knowledge of this online environment. I argue that these online intellectual virtues also demand (...) a particular view of cognitive integration. Online intellectual virtues are incompatible with a popular conception of extended minds proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers . I suggest that if we want to hold on to both a conception of online intellectual virtues and some conception of the extended mind, we have to accept a more gradual theory of cognitive integration along the lines of second-wave theories of the extended mind. (shrink)

There is a wealth of resources— ideas, insights, discoveries, inventions, traditions, cultures, languages, arts, religions, sciences, narratives, stories, poems, customs and norms, music and songs, games and personal experiences, and advertisements—that we produce, curate, consume, transmit, and inherit as humans. This wealth, which I define as semantic capital, gives meaning to, and makes sense of, our own existence and the world surrounding us. It defines who we are and enables humans to develop an individual and social life. This paper (...) discusses the shift from analog to digital semantic capital, and the extent to which this might affect the semanticisation of our identities, our lives and our realities. -/- . (shrink)

Drawing upon empirical studies of racial discrimination dating back to the 1940’s, the Movement for Black Lives platform calls for the abolition of capital punishment. Our purpose here is to defend the Movement’s call for death penalty abolition in terms congruent with its claim that the death penalty in the U.S. is a “racist practice” that “devalues Black lives.” We first sketch the jurisprudential history of race and capital punishment in the U.S., wherein courts have occasionally expressed worries (...) about racial injustice but have usually taken such evidence to warrant reform but not outright abolition. We argue that the racial discrimination at issue flows in significant part from implicit biases concerning race, criminality, and violence, which do not fit comfortably within the picture of racial bias advanced by the courts. The case for abolition, we contend, rests on Black Americans as a class (not merely those who interact with the criminal justice system as capital defendants or as murder victims) being subject to such bias and thereby not being accorded equal status under the law. (shrink)

This Article argues that just as the act of forcing sex upon a rapist is itself rape, the execution of a murderer is itself murder. Part I clears the way by defeating three simple, but common, arguments that capital punishment is not murder. Part II shows that despite moral theorists' best attempts to show otherwise, executions seem to instantiate all the morally relevant properties of murder. Part III notes a lacuna in the literature on capital punishment: Even if (...) there is a good moral reason to execute murderers, the distinction between capital punishment and murder requires a plausible account of the state's right to execute citizens. We have no such account. (shrink)

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration (...) narrow one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

Abstract: The study aimed to identify the level of psychological capital (Psychological Capital) and the level of sense of vitality among the administrative employees in Palestinian universities, among the administrative employees in Palestinian universities in Gaza Strip, and to achieve the objectives of the study, the descriptive and analytical approach was used, and the study population consisted of all the administrative employees in Palestinian universities: The Islamic University, Al-Azhar University, University of Palestine, and Al-Quds Open University totaling (1104) (...) employees, and a stratified relative sample consisting of (320) male and female employees was selected. The study tools were applied to them, represented by the Psychological Capital Questionnaire and the Sense of Vitality questionnaire. Of these, (294) male and female employees responded, with a response rate of (91.90%). The study reached several results, the most important of which was that the level of psychological capital (Psychological Capital) was high in Palestinian universities, where the relative weight reached (80.23%), and the field of optimism came first with a relative weight (82.05%), then the field of self-efficiency with a relative weight (80.75) The field of hope came with a relative weight (79.75%), and finally the field of flexibility came with a relative weight (78.37%). The results also showed that the level of feeling of vitality came with a relative weight (80.88%). In light of the results of the study, the researchers recommend that the employee be given tasks and responsibilities that enhance his tendencies and positive outlook on the nature of his work, and provide a work environment that supports creativity and has the necessary vitality and interest in building human relationships. (shrink)

In this article, the hypothesis according to which the institutional change is determined by the mobilization of social capital is exposed. It is analysed what consequences derived from this fact in relation to the processes of deinstitutionalization of the policy. It proposes an interpretation of academically relevant results about the meaning of the term ‘deinstitutionalization’, explains some of the most important antecedents on institutional theory and, fially, proposes some fundamental ideas to advance the philosophical reflction about the so-called new (...) institutionalism. (shrink)

Intelligent activity requires the use of various intellectual skills. While these skills are connected to knowledge, they should not be identified with knowledge. There are realistic examples where the skills in question come apart from knowledge. That is, there are realistic cases of knowledge without skill, and of skill without knowledge. Whether a person is intelligent depends, in part, on whether they have these skills. Whether a particular action is intelligent depends, in part, on whether it was produced by (...) an exercise of skill. These claims promote a picture of intelligence that is in tension with a strongly intellectualist picture, though they are not in tension with a number of prominent claims recently made by intellectualists. (shrink)

Intellectual humility, I argue in this paper, is a cluster of strong attitudes directed toward one's cognitive make-up and its components, together with the cognitive and affective states that constitute their contents or bases, which serve knowledge and value-expressive functions. In order to defend this new account of humility I first examine two simpler traits: intellectual self-acceptance of epistemic limitations and intellectual modesty about epistemic successes. The position defended here addresses the shortcomings of both ignorance and accuracy (...) based accounts of humility. (shrink)

Intellectual property has become the apple of discord in today’s moral and political debates. Although it has been approached from many different perspectives, a final conclusion has not been reached. In this paper I will offer a new way of thinking about intellectual property rights (IPRs), from a left-libertarian perspective. My thesis is that IPRs are not (natural) original rights, aprioric rights, as it is usually argued. They are derived rights hence any claim for intellectual property is (...) weaker than the correlative duties attached to self-ownership and world-ownership rights, which are of crucial importance in any left-libertarian view. Moreover, IPRs lack priority in front of these two original rights and should be overridden by stronger claims of justice. Thus, as derived rights, IPRs should not benefit of strong enforcement like any original rights especially if it could be in the latters’ detriment. (shrink)

Cultural capital is usually defined as set of social features that provide individuals with social mobility and the possibility of changing their hierarchical position in systems such as wealth, power, prestige, education, and health. Cultural capital thus affects the processes of social promotion or degradation. It also includes social characteristics that allow horizontal mobility, that is, changes in social group membership. An individual’s cultural capital includes his or her social origin, education, taste, lifestyle, style of speech, and (...) dress. (shrink)

Both proponents and opponents of capital punishment largely agree that death is the most severe punishment that societies should consider imposing on offenders. This chapter considers how (if at all) this ‘Ultimate Thesis’ can be vindicated. Appeals to the irrevocability of death, the badness of being executed, the badness of death, or the harsh condemnation societies express by sentencing offenders to death do not succeed in vindicating this Thesis, and in particular, fail to show that capital punishment is (...) more severe than the most likely alternative punishment offenders would suffer, namely, lifelong incarceration. The most plausible vindication of the Ultimate Thesis instead resides in how being condemned to death alters a person’s psychological relation to death. Our ordinary tendencies toward “death denial” diminish the terror that our awareness of death can otherwise induce in us, thereby enabling us to pursue worthwhile lives despite knowing of death’s inevitability. But condemned individuals are continually compelled to confront both the reality and specific circumstances of their own deaths and so do not enjoy the protective psychic shield that death denial provides us. This ‘relational’ rationale does not obviously succeed in proving the Ultimate Thesis, but if the Thesis is true, this rationale is essential to its justification. (shrink)

Intellectual servility is a vice opposing proper pride about one's intellectual achievements. Intellectual timidity is also a vice; it is manifested in a lack of proper concern for others’ esteem. This paper offers an account of the nature of these vices and details some of the epistemic harms that flow from them. I argue that servility, which is often the result of suffering humiliation, is a form of damaged self-esteem. It is underpinned by attitudes serving social-adjustive functions (...) and causes ingratiating behaviors. Timidity, which is habituated through self-silencing, is underpinned by negative attitudes toward the intellectual worth of the self, which serve a defensive function. Like servility, timidity is an obstacle to the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and especially knowledge about oneself. (shrink)

One of the many arguments against capital punishment is that execution is irrevocable. At its most simple, the argument has three premises. First, legal institutions should abolish penalties that do not admit correction of error, unless there are no alternative penalties. Second, irrevocable penalties are those that do not admit of correction. Third, execution is irrevocable. It follows that capital punishment should be abolished. This paper argues for the third premise. One might think that the truth of this (...) premise is self-evident. But in his paper “Is the Death Penalty Irrevocable?” Mike Davis argues that it is false: the death penalty is not irrevocable. While Davis’ argument is itself somewhat compelling, it receives additional support from work in the metaphysics of death, specifically the literature on posthumous harm. Strengthened in this way, the argument deserves careful consideration. I begin with a quick sketch of Davis’ argument, then show how the Pitcher-Feinberg theory of posthumous harm enables a more robust argument against the irrevocability of capital punishment, defending their theory of harm against standard objections in the literature. Having established the coherency of the robust argument, I conclude that it nevertheless fails to make the case against irrevocability. This is because it ignores the full set of practical requirements incumbent on legal institutions that wrongly punish someone. (shrink)

John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality and Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital shifted the focus of current thought on capital and economic development to the cultural and conceptual ideas that underpin market economies and that are taken for granted in developed nations. This collection of essays assembles 21 philosophers, economists, and political scientists to help readers understand these exciting new theories.

Recent work takes both philosophical and scientific progress to consist in acquiring factive epistemic states such as knowledge. However, much of this work leaves unclear what entity is the subject of these epistemic states. Furthermore, by focusing only on states like knowledge, we overlook progress in intermediate cases between ignorance and knowledge—for example, many now celebrated theories were initially so controversial that they were not known. -/- This paper develops an improved framework for thinking about intellectual progress. Firstly, I (...) argue that we should think of progress relative to the epistemic position of an intellectual community rather than individual inquirers. Secondly, I show how focusing on the extended process of inquiry (rather than the mere presence or absence of states like knowledge) provides a better evaluation of different types of progress. This includes progress through formulating worthwhile questions, acquiring new evidence, and increasing credence on the right answers to these questions. I close by considering the ramifications for philosophical progress, suggesting that my account supports rejecting the most negative views while allowing us to articulate different varieties of optimism and pessimism. (shrink)

Numerous studies indicate that racial minorities are both more likely to be executed for murder and that those who murder them are less likely to be executed than if they murder whites. Death penalty opponents have long attempted to use these studies to argue for a moratorium on capital punishment. Whatever the merits of such arguments, they overlook the fact that such discrimination alters the costs of murder; racial discrimination imposes higher costs on minorities for murdering through tougher sentences, (...) and it imposes lower costs on whites for murdering minorities by dispensing weaker sentences. These cost differentials constitute an injustice not simply to actual minority defendants in capital cases, nor simply to the actual minority victims of murder, but to all members of minority communities. I here offer two arguments for a moratorium on capital punishment: The first draws upon evidence of racial discrimination against minority defendants in capital cases, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy equal status under the law. The second draws upon the evidence regarding racial discrimination in relation to the race of victims, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy the equal protection of the law. Thus, by not assigning equal costs to murder, the American criminal justice system fails to provide racial minorities the equality under the law and discounts the value of their lives and liberties. A moratorium is the least unjust response to such a social injustice. I also reply to the criticism that a moratorium prevents us from executing deserving murderers. (shrink)

We critique two popular philosophical definitions of intellectual humility: the “low concern for status” and the “limitations-owning.” accounts. Based upon our analysis, we offer an alternative working definition of intellectual humility: the virtue of accurately tracking what one could non-culpably take to be the positive epistemic status of one’s own beliefs. We regard this view of intellectual humility both as a virtuous mean between intellectual arrogance and diffidence and as having advantages over other recent conceptions of (...) intellectual humility. After defending this view, we sketch remaining questions and issues that may bear upon the psychological treatment of intellectual humility such as whether evidence will help determine how this construct relates to general social humility on the one hand, and intellectual traits such as open-mindedness, curiosity, and honesty on the other. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that intellectual humility is related to argumentation in several distinct but mutually supporting ways. I begin by drawing connections between humility and two topics of long-standing importance to the evaluation of informal arguments: the ad verecundiam fallacy and the principle of charity. I then explore the more explicit role that humility plays in recent work on critical thinking dispositions, deliberative virtues, and virtue theories of argumentation.

Reviews the history of the death penalty, traditional arguments for and against it, the contemporary debate including debates over whether it effectively deters, its constitutionality, and international trends in its use.

According to the extended knowledge account of assertion, we should only assert and act on what we know. Call this the ‘Knowledge Norm’. Because moral and prudential rules prohibit morally and prudentially unacceptable actions and assertions, they can, familiarly, override the Knowledge Norm. This, however, raises the question of whether other epistemic norms, too, can override the Knowledge Norm. The present chapter offers an affirmative answer to this question and then argues that the Knowledge Norm is derived from a more (...) fundamental norm that demands that we do not hinder intellectual flourishing. As the fundamental epistemic norm can come into conflict with the Knowledge Norm, it is sometimes permissible to assert and act on what we don’t know. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this insight for the extended knowledge account of assertion. (shrink)

Intellectual courage requires acting to promote epistemic goods despite significant risk of harm. Courage is distinguished from recklessness and cowardice because the expected epistemic benefit of a courageous action outweighs (in some sense) the threatened harm. Sometimes, however, inquirers pursue theories that are not best supported by their current evidence. For these inquirers, the expected epistemic benefit of their actions cannot be explained by appeal to their evidence alone. The probability of pursuing the true theory cannot contribute enough to (...) the expected epistemic benefit for the action to count as courageous rather than reckless. Thus, there must be some other epistemic consideration which favors their action, besides evidence for their theory. I argue that the proper account of intellectual courage requires recognition of inquisitive reasons: a distinct category of epistemic reasons which concern successful inquiry. This category includes reasons to think a theory itself is promising, e.g., that the theory suggests potentially fruitful new research. It also includes social epistemic reasons, e.g., that pursuing a theory will improve the distribution of cognitive labor. Inquisitive reasons help explain why researchers who pursue improbable theories count as intellectually courageous, rather than reckless. The expected epistemic benefit of an action is partially determined by the inquisitive reasons in its favor. On my account, intellectually courageous inquiry requires acting in a way that is sensitive to inquisitive reasons. (shrink)

We have witnessed the athleticization of political discourse, whereby debate is treated like an athletic contest in which the aim is to vanquish one's opponents. When political discourse becomes a zero-sum game, it is characterized by suspicions, accusations, belief polarization, and ideological entrenchment. Unfortunately, athleticization is ailing the classroom as well, making it difficult for educators to prepare students to make valuable contributions to healthy civic discourse. Such preparation requires an educational environment that fosters the intellectual virtues that characterize (...) an examined life. This, in turn, requires an amicable and hospitable atmosphere in which a student enjoys the freedom to discover and articulate what she believes, how well her beliefs hang together, and what underlying assumptions or biases might be at work—without the fear that her self-disclosure will trigger immediate accusations and pigeonholing from fellow students. Educating for intellectual virtue is crucial for meeting these challenges and in this chapter we contribute to this strategy by offering some tools and guidance for promoting productive discussion of controversial issues. In the first two sections, we identify and explain two fallacious patterns of thought that often encumber discussion of controversial issues: assailment-by-entailment and the attitude-to-agent fallacy. In effect, these sections diagnose two diseases of discourse. We conclude each section with practical suggestions—in the form of thinking routines—for curing these ills. We will argue that part of the cure is to be found in the intellectual virtues. In particular, we will discuss how the virtues of intellectual charity, humility and carefulness can inoculate the mind against the fallacies we identify. (shrink)

Abstract: The study aimed to identify the relationship between psychological capital and dedication to work among administrative employees in Palestinian universities, and in order to achieve the objectives of the study, a descriptive analytical approach was used, and the study population consisted of all administrative employees in Palestinian universities: the Islamic University, Al-Azhar University, Palestine University, and Al-Quds Open University The number of (1104) male and female employees was chosen, and a proportional stratified sample of (320) male and female (...) employees was chosen, where the study tools were applied to them, represented by the psychological capital questionnaire and the job link questionnaire, and (294) male and female employees responded with a response rate of (91.90%). The study reached several results, the most important of which was that the level of psychological capital was high in Palestinian universities, where the relative weight reached (80.23%), and the field of optimism came first with a relative weight (82.05%), then the field of self-efficacy with a relative weight (80.75%), then The field of hope with a relative weight (79.75%), and finally the field of flexibility with a relative weight (78.37%). The results also showed that the level of dedication to work among the administrative employees in Palestinian universities in Gaza Strip was high and reached (82.52%), and the results showed that there are no differences between Respondents' responses about psychological capital were attributed to the variable of gender and years of service, while differences appeared in favor of the age variable in favor of the group (over 50 years and 31-40 years), differences in favor of bachelors and postgraduate studies at the expense of the diploma, and differences attributed to the variable of work status in favor of the academic in an administrative position . In light of the results of the study, the researchers recommend that the employee be given tasks and responsibilities that enhance his tendencies and positive outlook on the nature of his work, and provide a work environment that supports creativity and has the necessary vitality and interest in building human relationships. (shrink)

This article argues that capital flight of real investment presents governments with a quadrilemma. First, governments can tailor their policies to attract investors – but this is incompatible with a whole range of alternative policy choices. Second, they can simply accept capital flight – but this is incompatible with a robust capital stock and tax base. Third, they can harmonize its taxes and regulations with other states – but this is incompatible with international independence. Fourth, they can (...) impose capital controls – but this is incompatible with international capital mobility. These incompatibilities make up four different goals, the value of which are described. Strategies may be mixed, but the pursuit of any three goals must always come at the expense of the fourth. (shrink)

Biases affect much of our epistemic lives. Do they affect how we understand things? For Linda Zagzebski, we only understand something when we manifest intellectual virtues or skills. Relying on how widespread biases are, J. Adam Carter and Duncan Pritchard raise a skeptical objection to understanding so conceived. It runs as follows: most of us seem to understand many things. We genuinely understand only when we manifest intellectual virtues or skills, and are cognitively responsible for so doing. Yet (...) much of what we seem to understand consists in conceptions whose formation could have easily been due to biases instead, and the work of biases is opaque to reflection. If conceptions constituting how we understand things could have easily been due to biases, then we are not cognitively responsible for them because we cannot reflectively appraise what we understand. So, we are mistaken in thinking we genuinely understand most of the time. I will defend the grounding of understanding in intellectual virtues and skills from Carter and Pritchard’s objection. We are cognitively responsible for understanding when we manifest our expertise. We can do so, I will argue, without being required to reflectively appraise what we understand. (shrink)

The concept of social capital is a comprehensive social phenomenon consisting of social support, social integration, values, and norms. In social and economic transactions and economic and physical capital, non-monetary human, cultural, and social capital types have been accepted as neoclassical capital theories. The increase in information communication technologies, especially in economic relations, has now caused individuals to connect with weaker bonds compared with that in the past. Social capital parameters have gained importance to achieve (...) this interaction. This article reveals that the issue of providing corporate loyalty to emergency department employees with a good team spirit is considered as a strong social capital parameter. (shrink)